East Japan Railway Company(東日本旅客鉄道株式会社,Higashi-Nihon Ryokaku Tetsudo Kabushiki-gaisha?) is a major passenger railway company in Japan and one of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST[9] or JR East in English, and as JR Higashi-Nihon (JR東日本,Jeiāru Higashi-Nihon?) in Japanese. The company's headquarters are in Yoyogi, Shibuya, Tokyo.[2]

JR East was incorporated on 1 April 1987 after being spun off from the government-run Japanese National Railways (JNR). The spin-off was nominally "privatization", as the company was actually a wholly owned subsidiary of the government-owned JNR Settlement Corporation for several years, and was not completely sold to the public until 2002.

The East Japan Railway Culture Foundation is a non-profit organization established by JR East for the purpose of developing a "richer railway culture".[14] The Railway Museum in Saitama is operated by the foundation.